The Center Cannot Hold

I. A Comfortable Position for Black

“Well,” said the voice above the world, “this is already quite unpleasant.”

Sir Damar had heard that voice before.

It came without direction, neither from the vaulted blackness overhead nor from the pale country beyond the board. Sometimes it sounded amused. Sometimes it became abruptly excited, as if a murder long anticipated had at last acquired the necessary witnesses.

Now it was almost tender.

“And the problem is that both pieces are hanging.”

Damar stood on d4.

The bishop stood beside him on e4.

Between their squares ran a seam thin enough to cross with a finger, had either possessed a finger, or permission to cross in so simple a manner.

Beyond them, the black pawns waited.

There was one on c5 and another on e5, each able to take the knight. On d5 and f5 stood two more, their small, featureless heads turned toward the bishop.

Four pawns. Four threats.

A whole machinery of ruin assembled from the least expensive things in the world.

The bishop’s name was Severian. His mitre had been cut with a diagonal slit so deep that Damar could sometimes see the darkness through it. He had once supposed this an injury.

He no longer supposed it.

“Can you move?” Damar asked.

“Yes,” said Severian.

Neither took comfort in the answer.

Above them, the voice continued.

“White has achieved the ideal central setup. Unfortunately, Black has achieved the ideal setup for taking it.”

There was laughter from somewhere farther away.

The pawns did not laugh.

II. The Eight Roads

Damar inspected his roads.

A knight had eight roads, when the world permitted him eight. This was the chief glory of his order: he did not creep along files like the castles, nor bind himself to a single color like the clergy. He departed a square and arrived at another by a passage which no foot soldier could witness.

As a young knight, he had called this freedom.

Now he counted.

b3.

Across the dimness, on a4, a black bishop watched that square. Its face was smooth, but a narrow cut divided its crown. The slit was angled toward the place where Damar would arrive.

He imagined landing: the hard certainty of the new square beneath him; the momentary joy of escape; then the long oblique approach of that head.

b5.

The pawn on c6 guarded it.

c2.

Occupied by one of his own.

c6.

The same black pawn stood there, within reach of his blow. But behind it waited the pawn on b7. Damar might take a life on c6. He would not keep his own.

e2.

Occupied by one of his own.

e6.

The pawn on f7 guarded it.

f3.

Occupied by one of his own.

f5.

An enemy pawn, and behind it the cold protection of g6.

Eight roads.

Three closed by friends. Five offered by enemies.

He counted again, more slowly, seeking the small mistake on which a life might be rebuilt.

There was none.

The friendly pawns on c2, e2, and f3 looked resolutely forward. They had not intended to imprison him. That was the worst of it. They were performing their duties. Each had advanced, or remained still, according to some plan whose former elegance could still be discerned beneath the catastrophe.

On f3, a white pawn trembled.

“I can’t go backward,” it whispered.

“I know.”

“I would.”

“I know.”

A silence followed in which both understood that affection was not a legal move.

“The knight has squares,” said the voice above. “But it doesn’t have a good square. That distinction is rather important here.”

Damar looked up.

He could see nothing.

III. The Bishop’s Province

Severian’s imprisonment was more intimate.

The bishop belonged to the light squares. Every place he had ever visited bore the same pale complexion. The dark squares lay beside him throughout his life—adjacent, numerous, apparently solid—and remained as inaccessible as another century.

As a novice, he had been taught that the light squares constituted the whole habitable creation.

Later he had seen things moving on the dark.

Now the distinction seemed less theological than cruel.

His southwest road ended immediately at d3, where a white pawn stood with its round head bowed. His southeast road ended at f3, against the same frightened soldier who blocked Damar.

Northwest stood the enemy on d5.

Northeast stood the enemy on f5.

He could capture either.

He could survive neither.

If he struck the pawn on d5, the pawn on c6 would turn upon him. If he struck the pawn on f5, the pawn on g6 would descend.

Beyond those obstructions he could see the continuations of his roads: c6, b7, a8 in one direction; g6 and h7 in the other. Distance was visible but unavailable. An entire diagonal could be promised to the eye and withheld from the body.

Severian lowered his gaze to the edge of his square.

There was a worn place in the pale surface near his base. He had been standing there long enough to notice its shape: a little crescent where the finish had thinned, exposing a grain that ran contrary to the boundaries of the board.

That grain disturbed him.

It passed beneath light and dark alike.

It suggested that the divisions upon which his faith depended had been painted onto something older.

“What do you see?” Damar asked.

“A blemish.”

“Is it a way out?”

“No.”

The voice above them grew brisk.

“People sometimes ask what a bad bishop looks like. This is a useful example. Own pawns behind it, enemy pawns in front of it, and no time to repair anything.”

Severian listened to the diagnosis.

He had given sermons longer than that.

None had described a soul so completely.

IV. The Calculation

Their king remained somewhere behind them.

They could not see him clearly. Friendly bodies interrupted the files, and the central pawns shut out much of the farther board. Occasionally Damar glimpsed the white crown through a narrow interval.

It seemed very small.

“We were sent here to command the center,” he said.

“We did.”

“For how long?”

Severian considered.

“Long enough to be surrounded.”

Above, another voice spoke.

“Can White get some kind of compensation?”

The word passed over the board like a change in weather.

Compensation.

Damar had heard it after the disappearance of a rook. He had heard it when three pawns were offered to open a file toward a king. It meant that somewhere in the accounting of the invisible, the dead might be exchanged for something other than the dead.

Activity.

An initiative.

A few moments during which the enemy must answer instead of act.

Damar stood straighter.

“What would be enough?” he asked.

Severian did not answer.

Above them came a pause.

Then:

“I don’t see it.”

The hope went out of the knight so quietly that he felt ashamed of having shown it.

And yet the voices continued to calculate.

They spoke his destinations. They spoke the bishop’s captures. They named squares beyond his sight, discussed a queen he could not locate, dismissed a check that had briefly sounded like deliverance.

Each variation unfolded around him with terrible clarity.

He was on b3, and the black bishop came.

He was on b5, and the c6-pawn turned its head.

He took on c6; the pawn from b7 replaced him.

He landed on e6 and heard the dry scrape from f7.

In every imagined life he enjoyed one instant of arrival.

Then something entered the square.

Damar began to understand that the voices were not predicting a single future. They were visiting many, holding each up for inspection, and returning without injury.

He alone suffered in all of them.

“Stop,” he said.

The calculation continued.

V. The Hand

At last the heavens moved.

Not metaphorically. A vast pallor passed across the black vault, articulated in jointed lengths. Shadows swept over ranks one through eight. The light changed upon the bishop’s mitre.

Damar had seen the Hand many times.

He had never grown accustomed to its nails.

Those broad, translucent plates seemed less like armor than windows into a substance for which his world had no name. They were curved. Their edges were imperfect. Beneath them something pink and living lay pressed against the horn.

The Hand hesitated over him.

A tremor passed through his horse’s carved neck.

“Severian.”

“Yes.”

“If I take f5—”

“I know.”

There was no promise to make. The bishop would gain neither freedom nor safety. At most the pattern of the surrounding pawns would change. The walls would rearrange themselves around the same prison.

Nevertheless, f5 contained an enemy.

That was something.

The Hand closed upon Damar’s head.

For the first time, he understood how completely he could be owned.

His base lifted from d4.

The square fell away.

There followed the journey no knight could remember properly: a motion outside the ordained roads, across boundaries his feet never touched. He glimpsed the board from above and saw, with a sickness deeper than fear, how little of it he occupied.

The center was not a kingdom.

It was four squares.

He struck f5.

The black pawn was already being removed.

For a fraction of a moment, Damar stood victorious.

“Knight takes f5,” said the voice.

A pause.

“Yes. But g takes f5, of course.”

Of course.

The pawn on g6 came down.

VI. The Last Diagonal

Severian heard the capture before he fully understood it.

There was the light knock of wood upon wood, followed by an absence where his companion had been.

The black pawn now stood on f5.

Its head was indistinguishable from the head of the pawn Damar had killed.

The bishop stared.

He had expected sacrifice to leave some visible mark upon the world.

The position looked almost the same.

On d3 the friendly pawn began to mutter a prayer. It was a prayer Severian himself had taught it when their line first advanced: a modest invocation for protection, promotion, and a clear square ahead.

He could not bear to hear the end.

“Quiet,” he said.

The pawn fell silent.

The Hand returned.

Severian felt its shadow before its touch.

He looked once more at the worn crescent beneath him. The grain continued under the painted border, untroubled by light or dark. For one mad instant he wished to be not a bishop but a splinter: something small enough to enter that older substance, something without a prescribed direction.

Then he was raised.

The pawn on d5 vanished.

Severian descended into its place.

His last journey was a single diagonal step.

From d5 he could see farther than before. That seemed an especially careful cruelty. The square he had conquered offered him a prospect of the northern board, the distant pieces, the long roads he would never travel.

Beside him, on c6, the black pawn waited.

It had guarded b5 against the knight. It had offered itself on c6 under the protection of b7. It had waited behind d5 to kill the bishop.

Such a little soldier.

Such a full employment.

“Bishop takes d5,” said the voice. “And c takes d5.”

The pawn moved.

Severian saw its base cross the seam.

Then the Hand obscured everything.

VII. Off the Board

Damar lay on his side beyond the h-file.

There were others there.

A white pawn rested against a black one. A rook stood upright with no file beneath it. The pawn he had killed on f5 lay nearby, and neither seemed able to summon the hatred that had once been required of them.

Severian was placed beside him.

For a while they said nothing.

From this low angle, the board resembled a raised country seen from the shore. Above its edge, crowned heads and rounded helmets continued their business.

“Are we dead?” Damar asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Can you move?”

“No.”

“Neither can I.”

The voices discussed the remaining position. Their interest had already shifted elsewhere.

After some time there was a scrape, a murmur, and the familiar sentence:

“And White resigns.”

The pieces on the board became still.

Damar waited for darkness, or judgment, or the arrival of some larger understanding.

Instead the Hands returned.

The black pawn was lifted from d5. The kings were carried home. Rooks went back to their corners. The little soldiers were assembled shoulder to shoulder, their losses restored without ceremony.

Damar was set upon g1.

Severian was set upon f1.

Between them stood one thin border.

Ahead lay the unoccupied center.

The bishop looked toward d4 and e4, and Damar saw recognition gathering in the slit of his crown.

Above the world, the voice brightened.

“All right. Next game.”

The pawn on e2 moved forward.

Two squares.